those who cared by the ascendancy of the pilgrim narrative to the detriment of john smith, christopher newport and their ilk. as the century marched on, historians and novelists alike engaged in a sort of proxy war over the comparative of jamestown versus the virtues and vices of each colony, the magnitude of their participation in the american revolution, and ultimately the legacy of foundational american principles belonging to each building on the historical romance genre popularized by sir walter scott, northerners like washington, irving nathaniel hawthorne and james fenimore enthralled their with tales that wove regional events into their fiction. southerners responded with william gilmore sims leading, the pack. and if you cast your minds back to very first class of the semester, you'll remember that i discussed the press of value of fiction to late 18th and 19th century readers. that is to say was instructional and more entertaining perhaps than learning the same lessons in history books. a major aim of many novels was to highlight, exaggerate, heroic and villainous figures, encouragin

and next to elizabeth, we have jonathan white, professor of american studies at christopher newport university. he is the author, editor of let's see if you get your number right. how many? 17. no. 16. by my account. we're going to go with the record. are you not counting my kids for 16? the most recent is a house bill by slaves, african-american visitors to the lincoln white house. cole won the lincoln prize in. 2023 and then scott hancock. my colleague here at gettysburg college, he is professor of history or i should say associate professor of history and africana studies. his work focuses on the african-american experience from the mid 16th hundreds to the civil war. his most recent publication is a chapter in the edited volume the civil war and the summer of 2020. scott is also doing two things that scott study well. more than two things. scott is taking a stand on the issues of interpretation at gettysburg in a way that the experience of african-americans has been excluded. he was way out in the forefront even when i arrived here and certainly he and i had conversations. i wasn't fully a